RECIPROCITY THE ESSENCE OF FREE TRADE 173 



trade and produce the necessaries of life dearly for them- 

 selves. Such people could hardly export anything. They 

 must necessarily be poor, and their surplus population must 

 emigrate ; but these very conditions might be highly 

 favourable to social and moral advancement and a not 

 inconsiderable share of happiness. Theoretically, such a 

 people ought not to exist, since they only produce what 

 can be produced with much less labour elsewhere ; yet con- 

 ditions approaching to these have led to the development 

 of one of the freest and most enviable people of Europe 

 the Swiss. 



It is indeed fortunate that most countries are so varied 

 as they are, and that none are so peculiar as to be adapted 

 for the economical practice of one industry only. For if 

 they were, the principles of free trade would in time lead 

 to the whole population being similarly employed ; they 

 would become parts of a great machine for the growth of 

 one product or the manufacture of one article. It surely 

 will be admitted that such a state of things would not be 

 desirable for any country ; and it thus seems as if nature 

 herself had taught us that the principle of each country 

 limiting its energies to the one or two kinds of industry it 

 can practise best and cheapest, though commercially sound, 

 cannot always be carried out without injury, and must 

 always be subordinated to considerations of social, moral, 

 and intellectual advantage. These arguments, which 

 certainly go to the very root of the matter, have so far as 

 I know, never been answered, never even been considered 

 by the advocates of absolute free trade. 



The whole Programme. 



We will now come to the other essential point - that the 

 whole programme of free trade must be carried out if its 

 advantages are not to be overbalanced by disadvantages. 

 That programme is, that each country shall freely produce 

 that which it can naturally produce best, and that all shall 

 freely exchange their surplus products. But after fifty 

 years' example on our part, no other country approaches to 

 this state of things. By means of protective duties they all 

 artificially foster certain industries, which could not long 



